Talking from experience: we bought a bahia 46 at the bottom price, after it had had 5 years of charter and have been fixing her up while sailing the
Carribean and the
South Pacific for the last 3 years.
Bottom line: we are happy with our choice.
As mentioned in earlier posts, some
parts of the
boat seem too lightly built, and we did the following re-inforcements: a few layers of
fiberglass on the bottom along the middle of each
hull, added
cleats with full backing, added backing at the back to install a "loading mast" also used to support a
wind generator. Re-inforced the
bimini structure. Added a couple of
solar panels on the
davits, replaced the
rigging and the boom attachement. Added
batteries,
charger,
inverter, some
electronics, a
watermaker, replaced one head with a light
washing machine, etc.
Only problem:
Yanmar SD40 saildrives. The first thing we did, was replace the engines that had over 7000 hours each, with new ones. To minimize the change, we stayed with
Yanmar and are still regretting it. Their engines are fine, but nobody told us their saildrives are basically flawed by design and start slipping after 500 to 1000 hours, requesting a $2000
repair each time. This is true for the
SD40, a little less but still so for its replacement, the
SD50. Our first SD40 started slipping during the
Panama transit and it took all the
captain skills to complete the transit on one
engine. Being still under warranty at the time, we contacted Yanmar in
Panama City. It took them 4 months and 3 attemps to complete the
repair, and the
saildrive still makes a weird
noise even now. We are now always wondering when next we'll lose our
gear.
But this is a Yanmar problem, not a Bahia 46 issue.
BTW, the engines are not under the bunks. In fact, ease of access to the engines is one of the good features of this boat.
We have not experienced any of the issues listed by one previous poster. The boat
sails very well, is very comfortable. One drawback: the rounded shapes of the settees in the main
cabin and in the
cockpit: they look nice, accommodate 12 people in charter, but are not well suited for 2 people living on board.